A Sermon by Rev. Chris Jorgensen
January 21, 2018
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2 Kings 2:23-25
Elisha went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!” When he turned around and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and then returned to Samaria.
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Friends, would you raise your hand if you ever heard that passage of scripture read in church before? How many of you have ever read this passage yourself, or heard someone talk or teach about it before? As you might have guessed, this scripture is not very well known. It is not in the lectionary. The lectionary is that prescribed cycle of readings that many churches use each week in worship – including many Methodist churches. In theory, if you follow the lectionary readings for three years, it is supposed to pretty much cover all of the bible (or at least the important parts), but there are some passages that are conveniently left out. This is one of them.
Now as I said last week, if we are going to be Christians who are active in our faith, who take our Christian tradition and scripture seriously, we have to acknowledge that there are some pretty awful things in the bible. I’d say this scripture is in the top five worst stories in the bible. So today, I want to use this colorful and frankly pretty horrible story to talk about how we can take the bible seriously in the context of our faith in a loving God who we know in Jesus Christ.
So why this passage?
Well, I stumbled across this passage about seven years ago. And when I did, to be honest, I just thought it was funny. This is kind of funny on first read, right? A guy is walking along. Some kids are making fun of him for being bald, and he curses them, and then a couple bears come out and maul 42 boys. Even funnier, one of my clergy colleagues this week told me that he actually read this scripture to Boy Scouts while they were camping one time… because he wanted to get their attention in worship.
But I digress. Strangely enough, this is a text that I have mentally carried around with me and wrestled with for a long time. It would come up again occasionally through seminary, and I’ve taught about it at the Urban Abbey when I was there. And the reason I carry it around with me is that, even though I thought it was funny at first, I learned that it is best not to take the scripture lightly. I have come to understand that when we affirm the Bible as sacred, we must take it seriously, all of it.
During my Hebrew Bible course (my Old Testament course), my professor Dr. Ngwa said this, “Reading scripture is an ethical activity.”
I understand that to mean that when we read a biblical text, we make judgments about it. Wesleyans like us might use the tradition, our experience, and reason to decide what the scripture is saying, and then decide whether or how this scripture reflects the nature of God
or the nature of humanity or both. As a preacher, I might use commentaries and dictionaries to discern a scripture’s meaning and significance. And I do believe I am guided by the Holy Spirit when I study and research and write and preach – and you are guided by the Holy Spirit when you listen and reflect and study as well.
When I was researching our text for today, I was appalled to find out that there is a whole bunch of commentators throughout history who seek to explain how Elisha’s actions and God’s instigation of the mauling of the boys are justifiable. I will use just one example of this from a commentator named Mark Mercer [1]. Mercer explains that the youths in this text (note: he argues that the Hebrew word used here could mean youths – or even young adult males – not necessarily little boys) are actually urging the prophet Elisha to engage in idolatry at a cult site in Bethel. He says that what the NRSV translates as “go away” could also be translated as “go up.” In other words, go up to Bethel and worship an idol. Mercer makes a good case for this reading.
And then he explains that the reason the 42 young men got mauled by bears was because they were encouraging the breaking of the covenant with God, that this terrible outcome was because of God’s intolerance for idolatry, rather than anything about the young men making fun of Elisha.
When we read this ethically, we might agree that yes, idolatry and the breaking of a covenant with God is a serious sin, but even so, does the mauling of 42 people seem like God’s justice as we know it in the rest of the biblical text or what we know from tradition, reason, and experience? I would argue, “no.”
This reading from Mercer is just one example of a whole lot of scholars turning themselves into rhetorical pretzels trying to figure out a way to say that the prophet Elisha was right, and that anger and killing of children by bears is a reasonable divine response in this situation.
But what if we read this text freed from the idea that our job is to just defend what the prophet did no matter what?
That is what I believe we have in the interpretation offered by a scholar named Wesley Bergen, who reads this incident as one example of how the biblical text is actually inviting us to criticize the prophet Elisha.
Through Bergen’s study of all of the stories about Elisha in the bible, he shows how Elisha is a substandard prophet, who acts more like a roving miracle-worker than one who is committed to God’s larger purpose of bringing Israel back to Yahweh. Bergen suggests that though Elisha claims to speak in the name of God, he gets distracted from his prophetic purpose as he goes about the countryside blessing and cursing by his own power. Bergen summarizes, “The prophet is powerful. The prophet is not unambiguously good” [2].
A detail highlighted by the Jewish Study Bible supports Bergen, while mentioning nothing about these boys inciting idolatry (Mercer’s argument). The JSB interpretation emphasizes that calling Elisha bald-head was in contrast to the prophet Elijah’s hairiness [3]. And Elisha would have understood this as an attack on his authority, saying in essence, “you are no Elijah!” That attack on his prophetic authority is what caused Elisha to curse the boys.
So through Bergen’s interpretation, we see these cracks emerge in the prophet Elisha: that maybe he wasn’t as good of a prophet as Elijah, and maybe he knew it. And maybe that’s what causes him to respond with overreaction and evil to these boys questioning his authority.
But we have two different readings to choose from. One that says those boys deserved it, and this was just divine punishment, and one that says this story tells us more about the broken humanity of our prophets than about how God would react in this situation.
So how do we choose? Well, as I mentioned before, we use our Wesleyan Quadrilateral: the whole of scripture, our reason, the tradition, and our own experience of God’s grace. And we also use Jesus as our plumb line. Certainly, our Jewish brothers and sisters and sibling (who also call the Hebrew Bible their sacred scripture and have to deal with this text, too) have other ways to read the Elisha text critically and ethically, and they might decide that Elisha doesn’t act on behalf of a just and merciful God based on their tradition. But we, as Christians, we can evaluate whether this story truly tells us something about how God and God’s prophets would and should act by looking at our cornerstone, Jesus Christ.
Jesus is our plumb line. From the life, ministry, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we find out what is true about God. And the one teaching that comes to mind when I think about whether I need to defend Elisha’s actions or not is from Matthew 22: 34-40
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 [Jesus] said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. All the law and the prophets MUST conform to these two greatest commandments to love God and love your neighbor. Does cursing and instigating the mauling-by-bear of 42 boys because they made fun of your hair and/or your authority sound like loving your neighbor? I don’t think I even have to answer that.
It’s not just Jesus’ teachings that reveal to us who God is and what God would have us do. It is his very life, death, and resurrection. Jesus went around healing people and casting out demons – all with the intention of restoring suffering people to community so that they would be loved and cared for. Jesus died at the hands of the Roman Empire because he dared to confront the religious and political authorities who were oppressing his people. And then Jesus forgave even the people who nailed him to the cross.
Through his death and resurrection, Jesus taught us that the fullness of life and love come not from God dominating humans, but from God’s love and mercy that transforms even the most death-dealing situations into life – not through threat of harm but through the startling offer of love even to those who might seem least worthy of it.
So, no. I do not think God sent bears to kill children because they dared to make fun of a prophet. To want to hurt someone because they questioned our authority or hurt our feelings – that’s something that humans do.
But God… To love us so much that our fears vanish: that’s what God does. To show mercy beyond comprehension: that’s what Jesus does. To empower us to love those who would seek to harm us, knowing that even in our death, there is victory: that’s what the Holy Spirit does.
Thanks be to God, for Jesus Christ: our cornerstone, our plumb line, our hope.
Amen.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- What details of this scripture are especially interesting to you? What grabs you? What parts do you still have more questions about?
- What other stories or images of God in scripture (or elsewhere) do you find hard to reconcile with the God we know in Jesus Christ?
- Have you ever made a decision or acted in response to a situation after asking yourself the question, “What would Jesus do?” Tell us about what you did and why you thought Jesus would do the same.
- What is one thing about God that you learn when you consider the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus?
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Citations
[1] Mercer, Mark. Elisha’s Unbearable Curse: A Study of 2 Kings 2:23-25. Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology. Vol. 21, Issue 2. 2002. p. 165-198.
[2] Bergen, Wesley. Elisha and the End of Prophetism. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999, p. 13.
[3] The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin & Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).